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I have been rubbish these last few months and well and truly lost my mojo so haven’t been shooting much worth blogging. It hadn’t happened to me for ages and it wasn’t until a few weeks ago that I realised my mojo had gone on holiday without me. I would love to hear how people get themselves out of creative black holes!

Bread and butter pudding and custard is one of my favourite desserts from childhood. It always amazes me what is created out of such simple store cupboard ingredients. I replaced some of the milk with double cream to elevate this dish slightly but it tastes great with just milk too.

Butter a large shallow ovenproof pie dish Approx 1.75 lt capacity. Butter the bread slices and cut 4 slices in half on the diagonal. Arrange a layer of whole and half slices, butter side up, in the dish.

Sprinkle over a good grating of nutmeg and sultanas. Top with the remaining bread slices, then arrange the remaining sultanas over the bread, tucking a few in between the slices as well as leaving a few on top.

Whisk the caster sugar with the eggs, then add the milk, double cream and vanilla extract. Make sure everything is well combined, strain through a sieve and then pour this mixture over the bread and sultanas.

Leave the pudding to stand for around half an hour to allow the bread to soak up the custard. Preheat the oven to 180C/160C Fan/Gas 4. Dot the pudding with a few knobs of butter, then sprinkle over the demerara sugar.

Bake in the oven for 35–45 minutes, or until well set, golden-brown and lightly toasted in places. Eat hot or cold.

Can be reheated in the oven to retain its crispy bits. Set the oven to 160c. Cover with foil for 15 minutes and then cook uncovered for another 5-10 minutes

Rum babas are a bit of a labour of love but so worth it. A common supermarket dessert of the 80’s they have disappeared seemingly without trace these days so I had to start making them. This Phil Vickery recipe is no longer available online but it has given me failsafe babas for 6 or more years now and the splashed and stained print out is getting harder to read so I thought I’d better immortalise the recipe now.

Essentially rum babas are a sweetened bread dough bathed in a rum syrup until swollen and heavy. You can top them with plain or sweetened cream and I opted for juicy Kentish cherries over glace ones. I make the recipe below and freeze most of them before their rum bath then defrost them when required and make up the rum syrup and soak overnight ahead of the meal.

After the disaster that befell the UK on Friday, there was nothing else to do but bake. I had been meaning to try out this Dan Lepard recipe for toasted almond madeira cake for a while and the end of last week seemed like the right time to give what seemed a very comforting and wintery cake a try.

If I’m honest I thought it would be a bit moister and denser than it was so may try it with ground almonds instead of toasted flaked ones next time. It was still delicious with a cup of tea on a rainy summers afternoon. Dan said the method of mixing in half of the flour before adding the eggs results in a finer crumb texture and it definitely does make a difference.

I had my eye on this M&S recipe for Salmon and Cornish new potato tart for a few weeks and a picnic was the perfect excuse to make it. This tart has a really nice fresh flavour thanks to the lemon zest and travelled well too.

I made my own pastry but you could use 300g ready-made shortcrust pastry as suggested in the original recipe.

These mini crustless vegetable quiches came to be after I needed a quick lunch last week. My impending homelessness has made me be a bit more frugal with my food shopping and that means getting inventive with left overs so I set about seeing what else was lurking in the fridge after I finally used up the left over mincemeat and rustled these up. They fit the bill of a healthy lunch that would provide packed lunch left overs for the following day. You could use any leftover bits for these and omit the pesto if you don’t have Mediterranean style veg to hand.

This post was born out of the need to use up a lot of eggs before I go away so you may curse my frivolous use of whole eggs in the lime curd and the subsequent redundant yolks from the meringue. You could of course use another curd recipe that used yolks only but these generally require the use of cornflour and I much prefer a cornflour free curd.

This recipe also leaves a lot of surplus lime curd which can be decanted to a jar and stored in the fridge for other uses or another batch of pies.

I’m still not feeling 100% and the surprise cold spell this week prompted me to cook something comforting and decidedly autumnal so apologies, it’s not entirely in keeping with the season but it’s what I needed this week. I found this oven roasted roots frittata recipe whilst thumbing through my colleagues copy of River Cottage Veg.

I am also trying to be more inventive with left overs/lunches and this is great for using up leftover bits of veg. The original recipe suggests a combination any of the following but to definitely include some sort of onion:
shallots/onions, squash/pumpkin, carrots, parsnips, celeriac, beetroot, potatoes. I ended up using carrots, parsnip, sweet potato and red onion.